Julie McCarthy

Julie McCarthy has spent most of career traveling the world for NPR. She's covered wars, prime ministers, presidents and paupers. But her favorite stories "are about the common man or woman doing uncommon things," she says.

One of NPR's most experienced international correspondents, McCarthy opened the network's Tokyo bureau, "and never looked back." She has come full circle, recently returning to Asia to open the newest in the constellation of NPR's overseas bureaus in Manila.

In an overseas career spanning 25 years, she's covered Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America.

Before assuming her current post as NPR's South East Asia correspondent based in Manila, McCarthy served as NPR's international correspondent based in New Delhi, India, where she spent six years. She'd crossed the border from Pakistan, where McCarthy had established NPR's first permanent bureau in Islamabad.

McCarthy won a Peabody Award for her coverage of Pakistan. She was named the Gracie Correspondent of the Year in 2011, and she was honored with the Southeast Asia Journalists Association's Environmental Award for her coverage of Pakistan's 500-year flood in 2010.

Before moving to Islamabad, McCarthy covered South America as NPR's bureau chief in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 2005 to 2009. She covered the Middle East for NPR from 2002 to 2005, when she was first dispatched to report on the Israeli incursion into the West Bank, and later the war in Iraq and the turmoil in Saudi Arabia.

McCarthy's stint as London Bureau Chief for NPR often took her far afield from Britain. She spent months at NATO covering the war in the Balkans, reported for weeks on the devastating earthquake in Turkey in 1999 and devoted much of summer of 2001 at UN headquarters in Geneva covering the run-up to the Durban Conference on Racism. She covered the re-election of the late Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and traveled to the Indian island nation of Madagascar to report on political and ecological developments there.

Following the terror attacks on the United States, McCarthy was the lead reporter assigned to investigate al-Qaida in Europe. She traveled extensively in Iran following the Sept. 11 attacks to report on the Iranian reaction and the subsequent war in Afghanistan.

McCarthy was the first staff correspondent in Japan, assuming leadership of NPR's Tokyo Bureau in 1994. Her tenure there was a rich tapestry of stories including including the Kobe earthquake of 1995, the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the turmoil over U.S. troops on Okinawa. Her distinguished coverage of Japan won the East-West Center's Mary Morgan Hewett Award for the Advancement of Journalism.

McCarthy's coverage of the Asian economic crisis earned her the 1998 Overseas Press Club of America Award. That same year, McCarthy chronicled the dramatic fall of Asia's longest-running ruler President Suharto and the chaos that followed his toppling from power.

Prior to moving overseas for NPR, McCarthy was the foreign editor for Europe and Africa. She served as the Senior Washington Editor during the first Persian Gulf War. NPR was honored with a Silver Baton in the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for its coverage of the conflict.

In her capacity as European and African Editors, McCarthy was awarded a Peabody, two additional Overseas Press Club Awards and the Ohio State Award.

NPR selected McCarthy to spend the 2002-2003 academic year at Stanford University where she won a place in the Knight Journalism Fellowship Program. Her time at the East-West Center in Hawaii in 1994 as a Jefferson Fellow helped launch her long career as an international correspondent for NPR.

McCarthy holds degrees in literature and history, and is a lawyer by training.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed a steep slide in the country's currency in recent weeks in a rare public speech on Friday, hoping to assuage concern over the rupee's sudden depreciation and blaming the opposition for inaction in Parliament that he said was sending the wrong signals to the markets.

For an introduction to India's cultural and culinary delights, you might hop a flight to Delhi or book a trip to Mumbai. But to meet the country sans passport free of airport indignities, you could just curl up with the crime novels of Tarquin Hall.

Vish Puri, Hall's opinionated private investigator, is a 50-something Punjabi super sleuth with a fondness for family and food. The mustachioed detective cracks open India's underbelly with a caseload that delves into forbidden love, corruption in Indian cricket and the deadly clash between science and superstition.

India has accused Pakistani troops of killing five Indian soldiers after firing across the Line of Control, the de facto border in disputed Kashmir. Pakistan denies any firing from its side, and calls the allegation "baseless."

This latest incident comes amid attempts to renew diplomatic overtures for peace between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

Indian officials say Pakistani soldiers fired into Indian territory overnight, ambushing a patrol of Indian troops.

India's cartographers may soon be redrawing the country's map. If events go to plan, India will inaugurate Telangana, its 29th state, perhaps as early as next year — casting the spotlight anew on the challenges of governing a country as vast, and with a population as diverse, as India.

Telangana, on the arid Deccan plateau, is due to be carved out of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India's fifth most populous state, with a population of 85 million.

In India, some of the most entertaining reading on a Sunday afternoon is found in the classified ads. Page after page, the matrimonial section trumpets the finer qualities of India's sons and daughters.

Parents looking to marry off their children often place ads such as this one: "Wanted: Well-settled, educated groom for fair, beautiful Bengali girl, 22, 5'3"."

The matrimonial ads are a hallowed tradition in the quest to find a life partner — part of the institution of matchmaking that is as old as the country itself.

Flags of the competing political parties whip in the wind of seaside Karachi. But little else is stirring in this city of 18 million this day.

The MQM, a leading political party in the megacity, has shut Karachi down with a general strike in response to a deadly bombing at its election office. But as soon as the strike ends, the streets spring to life as if nothing were amiss.

"What has changed?" That is the question echoing through Delhi on Sunday. Public frustration over sexual crimes against women is erupting again, this time over a gruesome sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl.

The protests are smaller than those that swept over the capital in December with the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman, but the incident has revived debate over the startling state of sexual violence in India.

The culling of candidates in the run-up to Pakistan's May 11 election is providing the country some badly needed levity.

The "Pakistani Inquisition," as it's been dubbed, has election commission officials grilling office-seekers on their Islamic bona fides.

Many have stumbled badly, only to be disqualified.

But not Mussarat Shaheen, who performed impeccably. The former dancer — fabled for her Pushto films — was asked by an official in the city of Dera Ismail Khan to recite a verse of the Holy Quran, to test her mettle as a candidate for the National Assembly.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suffered only a blow to his dignity when a lawyer hurled a shoe at him Friday as he entered the High Court in the southern city of Karachi.

The shoe missed its target but made its point. Many in Pakistan's legal fraternity still harbor anger toward the former president for a number of actions he took against the judiciary during his military rule from 1999 to 2008.

Headlines in India's national newspapers tell the story of the state of women in the country. A sampling of what readers in New Delhi encounter makes for sober reading:

"Woman Alleges Gang Rape In Lawyer's Chamber."

"More Shame: Five Rapes In Two Days."

"Woman Resists Molestation, Shot Dead."

India's media have been zealous about exposing the pervasive sexual violence in the country since the gruesome gang rape and subsequent death of a 23-year-old woman in December ignited an international outcry.